Originally posted by gr8ful wes
Another great name for an inventer is, and I am not kiding, but the spelling might be off, Titsling, the inventer of the Bra.
That was totally made up for that Bette Middler movie. The bra as we know it was invented by New York socialite woman Mary Phelps Jacob in 1913. The fascinating story is available at:
http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa042597.htm
My vote for biggest influences, in historical order, are:
1. Buddha (Siddartha Gautama) - the first human to figure out how to turn his brain off and thus avoid the negative emotions associated with suffering.
2. Zoroaster (Zarathustra) - narrowed the gods down to one good and one bad, an idea that would flavor monotheism forever...
3. Socrates - got Western philosophy off the ground, more importantly was probably the world's first true individual.
4. Alexander the Great- the first attempt to unify the world. An inspiration for Euro Imperialists right up to Sid Meieir...
5. Jesus (Yoshua bin Youssef) - him or his messengers came up with the ultimate answer to Roman Imperialism, a movement based on compassion, equality, and love. It would be several centuries before the Romans figured out how to absorb this message and twist it back around to the usual "Kill everybody, let God sort them out".
6. Muhammad - at the time when Jesus' message was lost and the Empire in his name was collapsing to northern barbarians, God spoke again, choosing an older and wiser man to carry out the plan: unite the world, get them to speak one language and focus their energy to higher purpose. Of course this too got twisted around a bit but in the meantime the energetic movement he spawned would create Algebra, advance astronomy, and preserve the writings of Plato and Aristotle so that Europe could translate them out of Arabic and begin the renaissance.
7. Christopher Columbus - the man with the plan had no idea where he was really going and of course the Vikings had beaten him there long before but the determined Italio-Iberian was Johnny on the Spot in creating a change in world we will never see the likes of again.
8. Thomas Jefferson - a major player of the revolution and father of the constitution had his flaws but the New World he helped bring about was philosophically as big a change as what Columbus had done physically. Beware anyone who would tamper with what Jefferson dreamed up.
9. Thomas Edison - inspired by who knows what, Edison dreamt up item after item at the basis of modernity: electric lightbulbs, movies, sound recording, the list is endless and unlike Leonardo's Workshop, Edison's workshop actually took dreams into reality.
10. Adolf Hitler - this was a toss up and the only dark spot in the list. Like it or not, Hitler, the driver of WW2, did more to bring the world we live in thru its terrible birth pangs than any one other man. The last stand of barbarian tribalism that was the Third Reich spurred a war effort that led to the development of rocketry and the splitting of the atom, the end of colonialism and the onset of the cold war, the creation of the United Nations, the modern state of Israel, and the means for the United States to ascend to primacy. We would be wise to never forget this nefarious individual who seized leadership illegitamately by shouting down all opponents, consolidated his power by faking terrorism against his party and people, used his popularity to inflame the masses of his nation against outsiders, broke all treaties in a push for unilateral exercising of authority, unlawfully imprisoned and executed people on the basis of their ethnic origin, and ultimately brought down devastation on his land and its partitioning by its enemies for decades to come.
, was my attempt to ridicule this SOB.
